An Honorable Man
by kaleidoscope heart
Summary: Major spoilers for AWE! Oneshot. There was honor in death, and he had always been an honorable man.


**_An Honorable Man_**

Floating.

Floating for eternity…

Or to eternity? He wasn't sure.

James Norrington had not given many thoughts to the afterlife before this moment, but even he couldn't help to be disappointed by the vision of it. He was on a boat drifting down river, fog swimming around and about him like wisps of forgotten smoke, and he found that the lazy easiness of it was neither reassuring nor cause for fear. When he was little, his mother had told him the story of the River Styx, the river that flowed into the underworld and was guarded by the ferryman Charon. Money was to be left over the eyes or inside the mouths of the deceased, in order to pay their way across to the underworld. James had always thought it was a horrible, morbid story, and it almost made him smile now to think that the most outrageous of all those stories had ended up being true.

The fog grew thicker and his eyes stayed straight ahead. In front him were more boats than he could even comprehend, front to back, side to side, each nearly within an arm's reach of the other. All of those boats held people, each of those boats were a life completed, and it was nearly impossible to fathom that many people could be alive let alone _dead_. And now he was one of them. He was no longer part of the world that Elizabeth and the others still occupied. He had moved on, so to say, and he knew that. It was the question of 'where' that he had no answer for.

On the other ships there were a variety of other people, young and old, male and female. They all had the same looks on their faces and he supposed he must have that same look as well: eyes straight ahead (as dull as the fog around them), mouths slack with wonder, faces devoid of any particular emotion as they pulled deeper into themselves.

It was hard for James to focus on any thought for too long a period of time. He felt one thought slipping into the next before the first one was finished, and afterwards he couldn't remember the thought that had been first. He could realize now that he had thought so much when he was alive, too much. He had considered and wondered and rethought every movement he had made from the time he was little until the moment he had thrown fear away and gave Elizabeth that one last kiss.

And there it was.

One thought shining through like a lighthouse in the middle of the sea: Elizabeth. He said her name, _"Elizabeth…"_ and the amount of effort it took to say that was shocking. The fog cleared just a little, but if anyone else noticed it they kept to themselves. He smiled, and it was like smiling without muscles, it was so hard to do. He could see her face, could feel the press of her smooth lips against the bottom of his own as they stretched out in the semblance of the gesture he had done so few times in his life and had taken advantage of so often.

Why had he done it? He had seen the wonder in her eyes after their kiss and had felt it almost mirrored in his own. Why had he thrown his life away for people he clearly disliked (pirates of any kind) and a woman that hadn't wanted him? Why? It was a serious thought but his smile just continued to grow. He had done it because it was the only thing to do, the only thing he could do. He had made many mistakes in the past few years in the name of honor, but in the end it had been his honor that had refused to allow him to stand back as other people, good people, died. And it had helped that it had been her, the only woman to sway him from that undeniable sense of honor, that he had been sacrificing himself for. Oh yes. That had helped immensely.

He wished many things in that moment. He wished that she had loved him, and that he could have made her happy. He wished that he had been her type. He even wished he was still there to see her face now and know if she was pleased with the way he had turned out. Mostly though, he wished he had stood up sooner. He wished he had admitted that he enjoyed his stay on Sparrow's ship, and that he had been impressed with the pirate's strange sense of honor not so different from that of his own. He wished he had told her that even though he had never cared too much for William Turner and thought him unworthy of Elizabeth's beauty and spirit, he had never doubted their love for each other even on those days when she herself had done just that. He had always known the truth, from the first moment of the first day he saw them together… from the first glance they had cast in each other's direction even. It had always been there, something bigger than them and equally unavoidable. Like life. Like death too, one could say.

He shook his head, fighting for the effort to do it even as he felt his normal mannerisms slipping away into the nothing that was his past. It was over and he didn't feel upset about it or good about it either. He felt nothing, nothing except… he tightened his hand into a fist and heard the slight rustle of the fabric of his pants. Was there something in his hand?

He opened it, and smiled down at the small gold coin.

It was his debt to pay to Charon, and he would pay it gladly as long as he could hold on to his memories of her face and the sweet feeling that he had saved her. So James Norrington floated down the River Styx, the fog growing ever thicker around him as he drifted into the underworld, but the smile not leaving his face no matter how much of himself seemed to evaporate out as he went. The memory of her face was written inside the walls of his heart, and he was happy with the journey.

There was honor in death, and he had always been an honorable man.


End file.
